


the pythons in the limbs

by lennynards



Category: Ghostbusters (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Crossover, Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-06-28 03:39:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15699399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lennynards/pseuds/lennynards
Summary: "My name's not Kevin, it's Thor. I need you to help me get my brother back."





	the pythons in the limbs

**Author's Note:**

> For #11
> 
> The less I look the more I see the pythons in the limbs. - "Demons," The National

The phone hadn’t stopped ringing in days. It was like all it took was for half the population to disappear and suddenly everyone and their mother believed in ghosts.

“Okay, you know what? No.” Patty hung up the phone and dropped her pen, shaking her hand out as she glared at Erin. “This is ridiculous. Why can’t they just leave messages?”

“Because,” Erin said, “it’s better business if we talk to everyone personally.”

“And we couldn’t keep up with the messages, either,” Abby said. Erin nodded. That was the other problem. The phone rang again and she winced. This was bad. She was going to develop some sort of twitch sooner or later. Sooner, probably, at the rate things were going.

“None of these calls are even legit,” Patty said mostly under her breath. She sighed and reached for the phone, closing her eyes for a brief moment before answering, “Conductors of the Metaphysical Examination. Yes, this is the Ghostbusters.”

“No,” Erin said, reaching a hand out like that could stop her. They’d been trying so hard to get people to know their right name, and now, with Kevin… well, with a lot of people gone, their odds were a little better.

That was a morbid way of looking at it. She shook her head, trying to clear the thought. She’d been spiraling deeper and deeper ever since the Dustening – which, god, was such a stupid name, it wasn’t even grammatically correct, but there it was, on every TV station and website all the damn time, like anyone could possibly forget – but the longer they went from D-Day, the less likely it seemed that the people who disappeared might come back.

She was lucky, she knew. Abby was fine. Patty and Holtzmann were fine. Even her mom was fine. Plenty of people had lost everyone. They were calling the station every day, non-stop, reporting sightings and premonitions and calls from the other side.

“Hey,” Holtzmann sidled up next to her, goggles around her neck and a skein of bright red yarn looped around her forearm. “Pizza’s here.”

Erin watched Patty hang up the phone again. It would be thirty seconds, at most, before it rang again. “I’m not hungry.”

“You gotta eat, hun,” Abby said, dragging her away. “Plus, I need you to help me sort through the emails. Some of them are really crazy. Like, worse than normal.”

Holtzmann leaned around Erin. “Worse how?” 

Erin sighed. She wasn’t sure she wanted to find out.

**

The thing was, Patty was right: most of the calls weren’t legit. Even more of the emails were dead ends. People were grasping at straws, calling constantly because they saw a strange shadow that reminded them of their ex-husband or because an unusually large dust bunny had collected in the corner of an empty room. 

They’d started triaging everything, having people send pictures of their apparitions in for assessment. They had a backlog of images to assess; Erin kept putting her batch off. It sucked, having to call every single person and tell them no, it wasn’t a real ghost.

They hadn’t seen a real ghost since before the Dustening. 

“At least it’s good business?” Abby bumped her shoulder into Erin’s. After a minute she sighed heavily. “That was – don’t, I didn’t mean that.”

Erin looked from the wall to her and back. “I know. This is –” She gestured helplessly at the wall. They’d been hanging up all the pictures people sent in, trying to categorize them, plot them out on a giant map of the city. It was getting overwhelming to look at but at the same time she couldn’t stop staring at it. 

Abby leaned into her, a reassuring pressure. “Yeah.” 

In the background, Erin could hear the news and, louder, the phone ringing. 

“Uh, guys?” Patty said. 

“I’ll answer the phone,” Holtzmann called from upstairs, “but heads up: there’s a chance if I leave this screw loose, the whole building will catch on fire.”

Abby laughed. “Sounds like the new P.K.E. meters are almost done.”

“Guys!”

“I’ll get it!” Erin yelled back. It was almost her turn anyway. She smiled at Abby and ducked under some wires, heading for the desk and the ringing phone.

She made it two steps before realizing Patty wasn’t yelling about the phone.

“Hello,” Kevin said, waving from the middle of the freaking room. 

Erin blinked and then, when he didn’t go away, blinked again. “Oh my god.” The ground seemed like it was moving underneath her.

“Erin!” she heard Patty yell, right before everything went black.

**

When she woke up, Holtzmann was pressing a damp paper towel to her face. 

“Stop it,” she said, struggling to sit up.

Abby leaned over her. “Are you okay? You completely blacked out. It was terrifying!”

“And embarrassing,” Holtzmann said. “For you, I mean.”

“Shut up.” Erin sat up, ignoring the head rush. “I’m fine. I just –” She shook her head, trying to remember. “I thought I saw Kevin.”

It didn’t make sense. Kevin had been gone for ages. His note – _I’ll probably be back, please don’t throw away my stuff!_ – was her bookmark in The Goldfinch, which she was totally going to finish one of these days. You know, once all this apocalypse nonsense had died down.

“Yeah,” Patty said, “you did.”

Erin knocked Holtzmann’s hands away from her face. “What?”

Patty jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “You did.”

Kevin waved again. “Sorry I made you, you know.” He hit one hand into the other, miming her fainting. Great. Wonderful. For the first time, Erin genuinely wished she were one of the dusted. 

“Cool. I mean, it’s cool,” she said. “Well, welcome back.”

“The beard’s a nice look.” Abby pointed from Kevin’s face to her own. “Very different. Grown-up.”

Holtzmann made a face at her. 

“I don’t know,” Abby whispered, making a face back.

“Hey, Kev. Kevjamin.” Holtzmann moved across the room to where Kevin was sitting, quietly petting his own cheek. “Buddy, it’s not that we’re not glad to see you that you’re not dust in the wind, but like, where’d you go?”

Kevin’s face fell at the mention of the Dustening. He looked so sad for a minute that Erin’s stomach twisted up even more than it normally was.

“Oh, Kevin, it’s okay,” Abby said. “You don’t have to explain. We’re just glad you’re safe.”

“No,” he said, sitting up straighter. His eye twitched. Erin thought she was imagining it, but Holtzmann leaned closer like she saw it too. “I’m alright. And you deserve to know the truth. It’s just… it’s a bit of a long story.”

“Take your time, man,” Patty said. Erin figured it was eighty percent genuine concern and twenty percent pure relief the phone was being forwarded straight to voicemail right now. Maybe seventy-thirty.

“My name’s not Kevin.” He flexed his hands. “It’s Thor.”

Erin blinked. Her brain struggled to process what he said. It felt like a joke she didn’t fully understand. “Like the god of thunder Thor?”

“Like Thor the Avenger Thor?” Abby asked.

Patty laughed. “I knew there was something weird about you, man.”

“Is your eye _whirring_?” Holtzmann’s nose was millimeters from Kevin’s face. He laughed softly at her – at all of them, probably.

“I guess it’s actually not that long a story?” He made jazz hands and a little face to go with it like _ta da!_ It was weird. He just looked like Kevin with a beard.

“Can I see it?” Holtzmann asked.

“You know,” Abby said quietly, mostly to Erin, “it kind of makes sense. Remember when he didn’t know how the thermostat worked?”

Erin’s eyebrows shot up. “You think he’s actually Thor?” She felt like she was taking crazy pills. When she looked over, Holtzmann was peering into Kevin’s empty eye socket. And, oh god, his eyeball was sitting in her palm.

“I mean, look.” Patty held out her phone with a picture of Thor pulled up. He had long hair and no beard. “It _is_ eerily similar.”

“Is it?” Erin tilted her head, considering.

“Once I asked him to order pizza and he just yelled ‘pizza!’ into the phone for five minutes,” Abby said, like that was evidence. “And that time –”

“Yo, if you’re Thor, shouldn’t you be like, out avenging or some shit?” Patty asked.

Kevin looked like he had been waiting for that exact question. He took a deep breath. “I actually came back because I need your help.”

Holtzmann chose that moment to helpfully pop his eye back into the socket with a loud squelch and Erin blacked out again, just the tiniest bit.

**

“What I don’t get is this guy –” Erin pointed to the serial killer wall Kevin had apparently assembled while the rest of them were at dinner discussing the plausibility of this whole Kevin-is-an-actual-superhero thing.

“Jacked-Up Grimace,” Patty said.

“— snapped his fingers and _that_ is why half of the world disappeared?”

Kevin nodded. “Exactly.”

“You know, I read a tweetstorm from this guy in Brazil this morning and he was saying how they’re suddenly overrun with mosquitos because half of all the animals and bugs were dusted so they’re out of natural predators.” Abby shook her head. “I think Zika’s going to be a real problem.”

 _Zekeah_ Kevin wrote on a post-it note and pinned it to the wall behind Grimace.

Out of the corner of her eye, Erin saw Patty write _not familiar with common diseases_ on a different post-it and put it on her own _KEVIN IS THOR?_ serial killer wall. It was mostly pictures, printed out from their one low-on-ink printer, and post-its of all the weird shit they remembered Kevin doing that was suddenly starting to make sense. Erin was starting to think he wasn’t even in a hide-and-seek league.

It hurt her head too much to think about. She had to refocus.

“But your brother isn’t dust?” she asked. “You said Jacked-Up Grimace strangled him. In outer space. Where you want us to find his ghost.”

Kevin – Thor, Erin should probably start thinking of him as Thor now – nodded.

“If he’s even dead,” Abby said. She flipped through a list Thor had made of all the times his brother disappeared or faked his own death. “This is pretty long.”

“Didn’t that guy try to enslave us all like five years ago?” Patty asked. “Why are we trying to help him again?”

Kevin sighed. “He didn’t mean it.”

Patty made a face. “I’m pretty sure he meant it.”

Behind Patty, Holtzmann nodded. Kevin’s face fell. “I’m not saying it’s a deal breaker,” Holtzmann said. “Plenty of people have tried to kill me. I know too much.”

**

It was a no brainer to put everything on hold while they tried to help Kevin. Thor. Whoever. Erin was still trying to wrap her head around it. The weirdest thing was how much sense it made, in an insane way.

Unfortunately, everything they tried to do – all their normal ectolocation tactics, all their carefully honed techniques – was a total bust. 

“Maybe it’s because he’s Asgardian,” Abby said, frowning as they couldn’t get a reading off any of the P.K.E. meters for the third day in a row. 

“He’s not actually,” Thor said, standing directly behind her and making hilarious faces as he tried to read the meter, too. “Could that affect it?”

Abby shrugged. “We’ve never dealt with a non-Earth ghost before, so I don’t know.” She shifted, craning her neck to look up at Thor. “I genuinely don’t know.”

No one wanted to suggest that maybe Loki’s spirit wasn’t around. They’d all sat rapt as Thor detailed his time away from them, all the way through the return of his sister, the destruction of his planet, the death of… everyone he knew and loved. Jesus. It was worse than the immediate days after the Dustening, when all the channels said “tune to your local news for more information” and that information was only: please call our hotline to report missing persons. Operators are standing by. 

The lines had been jammed for a week. That was when the calls started coming to their office. When people started to realize the magnitude of what had happened.

Erin hadn’t known what to do then and she didn’t know what to do now. All she knew was she wanted to help. 

There had to be a way.

“We could try a Ouija board,” Patty suggested after three fraught days. “Don’t make that face, if Loki’s in the mist maybe he’ll be able to answer.”

It was a ludicrous suggestion. They tried it that night.

“Thor, do you want to ask the spirits a question?” Abby asked, all their fingertips resting on the planchette. 

He thought for a moment. “Loki, where are you?”

The candle on the table flickered. Erin found herself holding her breath, hoping. 

Nothing happened. Disappointment bloomed in her gut followed by annoyance that she’d even thought a Ouija board might work, even for one stupid second.

She’d say they were finding dead ends all around, but dead ends at least held ghosts. This was brick wall after brick wall, with no hope in sight.

**

“Morning,” Thor said, sitting at the table across from Erin. He yawned and rubbed at his real eye.

“Hey.” She pushed the box of Cheerios closer to him, watching as he pulled a handful out of the box. She tried not to sigh; the apocalypse was already here, it wasn’t like it would come again because he wasn’t using a bowl to eat cereal.

Erin tried to go back to the book on interdimensional and interstellar communication Patty had miraculously found at the library, but it was hard with Thor crunching away. She kept sneaking glances at him – he had dirt on his arms and dark circles under his eyes. When he caught her looking, he smiled. It didn’t make him look any less wrecked.

“Did you get any sleep last night?” she asked.

Thor shook his head. “I was FaceTiming a friend in Wakanda. He has taken the – what did you call it? The Dustening particularly hard.”

“Oh.” Erin didn’t know what to say to that. She was vaguely surprised Thor had other friends. And apparently a phone. 

“I told him about our current mission and offered our help once it’s successful.”

“Um, yeah, sure.” Erin desperately wished someone else were awake to help navigate this. “I mean, you know it might not be, right?”

He looked at her and didn’t say anything. Her throat went dry and she had to cough a few times before she said, “Sometimes ghosts don’t stick around. They just…” she pushed her hand through the air to imitate passing on.

Thor was quiet for a moment and then he shook his head. “Not Loki.”

Erin drew a measured breath. “You said that this time – you said it wasn’t a trick. That you think he died for real.”

Thor looked at his hands and nodded. 

“Okay. So maybe he’s –” she tried to press the point but Thor cut her off. 

“I called him the worst.” He flexed his hands, refusing to look up. “Before he died. I told him he was the worst brother.” 

Erin made a small sound like she’d been punched; she couldn’t help it. 

“He kind of was,” Thor said, the corner of his mouth twitching up to indicate he was joking. It was kind of negated by the way he was tearing up. He cleared his throat. “Anyway. I would like a chance to say goodbye.” 

The look on his face was painful, equal parts resigned and defeated and crushed. Erin felt like the sadness was coming out of her own pores.

“I…” She reached across the table, setting her hand on top of his. It didn’t feel like enough. Nothing would be enough. “We’re not giving up. If he’s around, we’ll find him.”

Thor nodded once. “Thank you.”

Erin squeezed his hand and wondered how the heck they were going to do this.

**

“This isn’t working,” Abby said, dropping her book in frustration. The thud rattled the half-empty containers of Chinese food that littered the table. Abby reached for the fried wontons. “Maybe we should take a break. We could answer some of our messages, I’m sure there’s a simple win in there.”

Everyone looked to the overflowing pile of scrap paper with phone numbers of missing persons and reported sightings. It was so big it was threatening to take over half of the desk.

When no one said anything, Abby sighed. “Look, it’s been almost two weeks and we haven’t made contact with…” She paused, not wanting to say Loki out loud. They’d all been skittish about it since Erin relayed their whole heart-to-heart. It didn’t help that Thor got weird every time they mentioned Loki’s name, and whenever he got weird he booked it out the door and disappeared for like, at least three hours and always came back smelling like dirt and that old Gap perfume that was half grass, half chemicals. “The other side.”

“We could visit the ship,” Thor said eventually. A few feet away, Holtzmann touched two M.E.D. wands together, creating an arcing current. Erin watched the electricity crackle for a minute.

“Wait, what?” she asked, realizing what he’d said. “You mean you want us to go to the ship you last saw your brother on? The ship that’s in outer space?”

He stared at her for a moment. “Yes?”

“OUTER SPACE?”

“Erin, calm down,” Abby said, petting Erin’s spine. It felt nice. “Thor doesn’t mean that.”

“I do,” he said immediately. “We could all go. All of us. The Ghostvengers.” 

Holtzmann stopped sparking the wands to stare at him. 

Abby paused. “Okay, we’ll talk about that name later –”

“You don’t like the Ghostvengers?” Thor’s face fell again. 

“No,” she said, “I mean – no, that’s not what we’re talking about. We can’t go to space.”

He frowned. “Why not? You’re always saying a ghost is most likely to be found at its point of origin.”

“Aw,” Holtzmann beamed, “he’s learning!”

“Because it’s _space_ , Thor!” Erin yelled. “Astronauts have to train for like, forty years to go to the moon.”

“It’s more like two, but you know.” Patty shrugged. “Still no way in hell we’re going.”

“I took Jane to Asgard. It was no problem.”

Erin scoffed. “Oh well if _Jane_ went.”

Patty reached for a spring roll. “Who’s Jane? Wait – that girl from Us Weekly? Your ex Jane? That Jane?” 

“I didn’t know you knew her! We should ask her to help. Or do you think she won’t because we broke up? Ask her at your next weekly meeting.”

Erin didn’t bother explaining Us Weekly was a magazine.

“Are we talking about Jane Foster?” Abby’s voice reached a pitch Erin didn’t know was possible. 

Holtzmann dropped the wands almost as fast as Abby dropped her chopsticks. “Doctor Jane Foster?” She grabbed Thor’s arm. “You have to give us her number.”

“Uhhhhhh,” Erin didn’t know what to say, but the look on Thor’s face was ten times more concerned and confused than it was anything else.

“No, sorry, is that weird? That’s weird, isn’t it.” Abby shook her head. “Never mind. Just give her my number, it’s 212 –”

“No one is going into dang outer space!” Patty yelled. “Over my dead body!”

“Let’s all calm down,” Erin said. “Thor, do you want to explain how you took Jane to space?” That felt like a safe place to start.

“Yes,” Holtzmann said. “And then you can text her and ask her to meet us there.”

“How? I don’t have a phone.”

“FaceTime her, then.”

“Oh,” Thor laughed a little, “I don’t think she’d be terribly thrilled to see me on her terrace again.”

Holtzmann’s eyes widened. “How –”

They didn’t have time for this. 

“Guys, focus!” Erin said. “Thor, how did you get to space?”

“Yes, right.” He reached for the lo mein. “Alright, what do you know about gravitational anomalies?”

**

“Psst, Erin. Erin. _Erin_.”

She jerked upright. “I’m awake!” 

It was dark in the station, just the dim light from Holtzmann’s machines and the soft glow of the instrument panel along the wall. Erin didn’t remember falling asleep, only that she’d been reading about the Greenwich Convergence and then… nothing. God, this was a brutal lead they were following. Nothing but dead ends and Thor’s insistence that his brother could be saved. It was exhausting.

“I think I figured it out,” Holtzmann said, holding the newest panel she built above her head and hopping from one foot to the other. “And when I say I think I mean –”

She leapt out of the way and in her place stood a bored, pale guy Erin recognized from the news. 

“Surprise,” he said, without any affectation whatsoever.

“Holy shit.”

Holtzmann grinned at her. “I know right?” She waved between Loki and Erin. “Now tell her what you’ve been telling me.”

Loki rolled his eyes and then said, “I’m not a ghost.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Holtzmann reached out and sliced her hand through Loki’s side, proving he wasn’t a solid-state being either. 

“Is he in denial?” Erin asked Holtzmann out of the side of her mouth. Loki huffed and crossed his arms.

“I am neither dead nor deaf.”

“I think so,” Holtzmann said, putting her hands on her hips. Loki made an aggravated sound. 

“So should we wake everyone else up?” Erin asked, even though she already knew the answer to the question.

**

“THIS IS AMAZING,” Thor said, even as he tried and failed to hug Loki for the fifteenth time that morning. 

It would’ve been less pathetic, only every time he tried for it, Loki would reach out like he also wanted to hug Thor and then stand there laughing as Thor stepped into empty space and his arms sliced through air.

“I hate this!” Thor said, not for the first time. It was weird how cheerful he sounded. “Brother, tell us how to find you.”

“You can’t,” Loki said again. 

“We can,” Thor turned serious, stepping as close to Loki as he could without walking through him. “We will. That’s why I’ve enlisted the Ghostbusters – if anyone can fix this, they can.” 

“No pressure,” Erin said under her breath. Abby made a face like _yikes_. 

If Thor heard, he didn’t let on. His hand twitched like he wanted to touch Loki and then remembered he couldn’t. “I promise.”

The way he said it made Erin feel like she had to look away. The room was too quiet all of a sudden, the air too thick. It felt like there was a storm rolling in, everything too sharp and still.

“God, your new eye is _terrible_ ,” Loki said, and just like that Erin could breathe again. “Why is it the wrong color?”

“My friend Rabbit gave it to me!” Thor winked a few times like he was trying to move the eye around forcibly. Erin hated when he did that. She went back to the book she’d been reading that was allegedly about recorporealization but Erin was starting to suspect was just a load of useless crap dreamed up by some idiot who wouldn’t understand metaphysical science if it barfed ectoplasm all over his penny loafers.

“You should’ve kept the gaping eye wound,” Loki said. 

Thor laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

**

They couldn’t get Loki to stick around. He would be there and then, quick as he came, he’d disappear again. For the first few days, Thor was convinced it was a game, that Loki was hiding upstairs or outside or had transformed himself into a length of ghost wiring –

“It’s a rubber snake!” he once spent an hour shouting, shaking a hose like it’d suddenly change into a person.

“Thor. Buddy. Pal. God of mine.” Holtzmann had been the only one he would listen to. “You gotta think about this: if you can’t hold him when he’s a ghost, why can you hold him when he’s a hose?” 

– and he’d spent every waking minute Loki was missing trying to catch him and trick him into being visible again. More than once Erin had caught him throwing their stapler at a shadow on the wall, grumbling to himself every time it clattered to the ground.

Loki wasn’t much use either. He always seemed vaguely annoyed he’d been summoned, and usually spent several minutes loudly complaining that he had been in the middle of eating or plotting coordinates or auditing the census or whatever.

“Here’s what I don’t get,” Abby said once, after Loki had disappeared and Thor had begged off to go “FaceTime his friends in Wakanda.” Erin wasn’t sure where he actually was – he still didn’t have a phone. “Every time Loki shows up, he’s mad that we interrupted him.”

Erin shrugged. “I think he’s just an angry person.” 

“No, I mean like, we’re actually interrupting him – he’s always doing something, and not chilling on the astral plane.”

“Half the planet turned to dust,” Patty said. “Maybe the ghost economy couldn’t handle it.”

“I’m sorry,” Erin said, “the ghost economy?”

“They’ve got the opposite problem we do now! There’s not enough resources to go around.”

“But ghosts don’t need resources.”

“Then why’s Loki out here complaining about his dang job all the time?”

“He’s not dead!” Abby yelled. She winced and then turned around, making sure Thor hadn’t crept in and overheard. “That’s what I was trying to say. I don’t think he’s dead.”

“You think he’s faking again?” Patty shook her head. “That’s messed up.”

“No, Holtzmann and I were checking the code in her comms portal and there’s a line that’s wrong. I think she stumbled into a way to pull him through time.”

There was dead silence in the room, and then Erin said, “I’m sorry, what?”

“Remember how that first night he kept saying he wasn’t dead?” Holtzmann said. “He wasn’t lying!”

Erin blinked, her brain twisting in too many directions at once. Across from her, Patty looked equally dumbstruck. 

Loki had to be dead. Thor had watched him die. 

Only Loki kept insisting he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t corporeal, but he also wasn’t anchored to their dimension. And the one time Holtzmann had accidentally caught him with the ray from a proton pack he’d only glared at her as the blast shattered a glass on the table behind him. At the time Erin chalked it up to him being a god, but if the code was wrong, and the alignment was right… 

“Thor said the Convergence was only once every five thousand years,” she said. 

“But we only need a small part to be aligned now,” Abby said, moving the coasters Thor had used in his original explanation. “Not all nine realms.” She stepped away from the table so everyone could see the edges of two coasters overlapping.

Erin slowed her breathing the way they taught in her yoga class. She missed the time pre-Dustening when she still had time for yoga. When she had a yoga teacher that wasn’t in a dustpan.

“So what do we tell Thor?”

“Nothing yet,” Abby said. “Not until we’re sure.”

“Oh yay.” Patty made a face. “Lying.”

**

“Hold this.” Holtzmann handed a screwdriver to Erin. “And these.” 

She wasn’t ready and almost dropped half of them.

“Careful.”

Erin jumped. “Jesus! What did we talk about?”

Loki laughed. 

Holtzmann didn’t seem to notice anything weird was going on. Then again, she had rolled herself under a metal barrel that had been hoisted up onto planks. Erin bent down, trying to see what she was doing underneath it. It was suspiciously quiet.

She started to touch the barrel and Holtzmann said, “Don’t. It’s hot.”

Erin took an instinctive step back, straight into the cold rush of air that came with – 

“Oh my god, can’t you people look where you’re going?” Loki said.

“You people?” Patty yelled, and then, a second later, “Oh, you mean like, alive people, that’s fair.”

Loki stared evenly at her for a minute. Patty stared back. Erin tried to make subtle hand motions that she should cut it out, leave the genocidal ghost alone, but they went unnoticed.

Shockingly, Loki blinked first. 

“That’s right,” Patty said and went back to deleting messages from their full voicemail. The rate of ghost sightings had only increased with time. Erin couldn’t remember the last time they responded to one. It was all Project Loki all the time these days.

“What,” Loki trailed his hand just above the edge of Holtzmann’s barrel, “is this?”

Holtzmann rolled out and tipped her welding mask up. “This? It’s a –”

Loki held up his hand. “Never mind. I don’t care. Is Thor here?”

“I think he’s – he said he was going out?” Erin made a face. She was so focused on not telling him about their ghost Loki maybe being Loki-from-the-past-who-was-definitely-not-a-ghost that she was barely listening to him when he talked anymore. If he had friends in New York, who the heck were they? No one had seen any of the other Avengers since the Dustening, even though there were rumors on the internet that the government was harboring War Machine.

Were they secretly in New York? Was that who Thor was hanging out with?

Loki cleared his throat, startling Erin out of her thoughts. “What?” she asked. He rolled his eyes and then disappeared. 

“That dude is trippin,” Patty said. “I think we just leave him where he is.”

“Oh, Patricia,” Holtzmann said. “Where’s the fun in that?”

**

Sure, they’d stumbled into Loki’s ghost by mostly-accident, and they couldn’t figure out how to get him to stick around, and every time he disappeared Thor seemed a little more unhinged until he came back again, but –

Nope, Erin couldn’t think of any actual good news that’d happened since Loki first appeared. They were no closer to an answer than they were on day one. They might as well be trying to bring the dusted back.

“It’s alright,” Thor said, staring out the window at the pouring rain. “One day we will figure this out.”

It was weird, seeing him this still. This quiet. It was like he was an entirely different person from Kevin.

“Just talk to him like this,” Erin wanted to say, but she didn’t have it in her to tell the broken shell of him to pull himself up by the bootstraps and move on. He deserved even more kindness than she had to offer. 

“Sure we will,” she said, almost believing it as she reached for him. 

He let her hug him for a long time, which normally would have made her feel better, but this time only seemed to make them both miserable.

Outside, there was a bright flash. Thunder followed almost immediately. 

“That wasn’t me,” Thor said.

Erin wasn’t sure if it was a joke but she couldn’t stop laughing anyway.

**

“Oh boy,” Holtzmann said, and it was the quiet, calm way she said it that made all the hair on Erin’s body stand on end.

“What?” she asked, wiping the drool off her chin. She’d been dead asleep. Something must’ve exploded and woken her up. So. That was a great sign.

Nobody else was stirring, though. Patty was sacked out on the floor a ways away, and Abby was still dead to the world at the other end of the table. Even Thor was out like a light. 

Maybe Erin was worrying about nothing.

“Hey,” Holtzmann said, too close for comfort, the heat of her blowtorch making Erin shy away, “can you look at this?”

“Uh, yeah, of course.” Erin blinked a few times, trying to wake herself up faster. Trying to calm herself down. “Sure.”

Holtzmann led her to a back corner of the lab, pointing at the barrel she’d been fiddling with for days now. 

“So I know the original plan was to track down and corporealize a ghost and we can definitely go back to that plan –”

“Back to it?”

“But also I think I broke-slash-fixed everything. Maybe.” Holtzmann grinned and wrinkled her nose, pleased and worried at the same time.

Erin had no idea what she meant. “What?” 

“Remember how you and Abbers fell into that nuclear ghost wormhole and it turned your hair white and time sort of stopped for you but on earth it didn’t?”

“Did time stop?” Erin asked. It hadn’t felt like it had. Or maybe it did. Looking back, it had felt like she was falling forever, that she’d never reach Abby. She’d thought it was just the stress of the moment that made everything speed up and slow down at the same time.

“Yeah, it did.”

Erin frowned. “I don’t think so.”

“It did.”

“Pretty sure no.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Agree to disagree.”

Erin gritted her teeth and said, “Okay, so you’re saying the nuclear ghost wormhole can corporealize Loki?”

“No,” Holtzmann said and Erin drew in the deepest, most cleansing breath she possibly could. “But if we sync it with one of the nearby gravitational anomalies, it can _find_ him.” She grinned, genuinely 100% pleased this time, and pointed. “It was his idea.”

Erin spun around to find Loki grinning at her. “Jesus Christ, have you been here the whole time?”

He laughed and disappeared.

“He was,” Holtzmann said, and fired up her blowtorch.

**

“But how do you know it works?” Patty asked, peering into the green vortex Holtzmann had ignited in the barrel.

“What do we ever really ‘know’?” Holtzmann asked, scratching her head with a screwdriver. 

Erin stood nearby with the fire extinguisher just in case.

“Lots of things,” Patty said. “Water is wet. Two plus two is four.”

“So is there a plan?” Abby asked. “I feel like we need a plan.”

“What goes up must come down – definitely know that one.” Patty ticked items off on her fingers. “The sky is blue.”

“It’s fairly simple.” Loki ignored the way Thor stepped closer to him, so close that half of his body was inside Loki’s, distorting his left side. “Make a wormhole –“

“Somewhere bigger than this barrel. This was just a test,” Holtzmann said.

“The ice caps are melting.” No one was listening to Patty, but that didn’t stop her. “Hillary won the popular vote.”

“Right,” Loki said, looking from Holtzmann to Thor and visibly deciding to move on. “Make a _bigger_ wormhole in a gravitational anomaly –” 

“We found reportings of one in Jersey,” Holtzmann told everyone. “Twitter’s still good for some things.”

“And then you,” Loki gestured to Thor like no one else was talking, “go in it.”

That stunned everyone in the room. Even Patty froze.

“ _That’s_ your plan?” Abby shrieked. “Create a wormhole and toss Thor in it and hope for the best?”

“That is a terrible plan,” Patty said.

Thor peered into the barrel. His face glowed neon. “Let’s do it!”

**

Despite Loki’s confidence and Holtzmann’s prototype, it still took some time to get all their ducks in a row. But it wasn’t that long before the five of them were crammed into the hearse, headed over the GWB to New Jersey.

“It doesn’t look very new,” Thor said, kicking at some litter.

Erin blinked at him and then went back to helping Holtzmann mark the ground.

“Man, didn’t you crash land in New Mexico?” Patty said. “Don’t play dumb.”

“It was a joke,” Thor said, and bent down to help her lift the barrel. Or really it was more like Thor just hefted the barrel while Patty stood there.

“You could’ve been a lot more helpful around the lab,” she said, following behind.

“Just put it in the middle,” Abby said. “Right there.”

“No, a little to the left.” Erin motioned with her hand. “Nope, back a bit.” Thor kept following her directions, taking small steps, his biceps threatening to burst out of his t-shirt even though he was moving the barrel like it weighed nothing at all.

“For the love of – don’t listen to her, Thor,” Abby said, glaring at Erin. She glared back. God forbid they have one good thing on this half-empty post-apocalyptic daymare of a planet. “Go get the rest of the parts. Patty, show him which ones we need.”

Patty grumbled under her breath about being relegated to moving shit but then she waved her arm. “Come on, dummy.”

Thor frowned at her. “I said it was a joke.”

“You also said your favorite flavor is blue!” she said as they trekked back to the car.

“The bottle _says_ ‘blue blast!’” Thor said, his voice trailing off as they got farther away. “That means it’s a flavor!”

By the time they had all the equipment set up, Holtzmann flicked a switch from _somewhere_ and said, “Okay, no sudden movements. Thor, I’m going to count to three and then you step into the light, okay.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Erin said to Abby.

“One.”

Erin held her breath.

“Two.”

Thor inhaled. Erin swore he got taller. And hotter. How the heck did he look so great in that neon glow?

“Is that him?” someone yelled. Erin jumped, bumping into Abby. This is exactly what they did not need, and exactly why they were here at six in the morning, when the park was nearly empty. Stupid suburban joggers trying to be healthy. The world had kind of ended! Why were people even trying anymore?

“Shit,” she said, grabbing Abby’s arm to steady herself. It overbalanced Abby and she stumbled forward, taking Erin with her. Everything got brighter and warmer.

“Thor? Hey! Thor!” whoever it was continued to yell.

“What the fuck?” Patty yelled. Erin couldn’t see her across the circle, and then suddenly she could. Patty was glowing. “Is that a raccoon? Holtzy, watch out!”

“Oh no,” Abby said, and that was the last thing Erin heard before everything went black.

**

“Please tell me I fainted.” It was hard to see anything. Erin knew that wasn’t a good sign, but she still hoped.

She hoped really, really hard.

“I just want to state for the record, up front,” Holtzmann said, “that I do not know how to get us out of here exactly, but I do think it’s a good sign that I counted all the way to three.”

In the dim light of wherever the hell they were – it sure wasn’t the park – Erin could just make out Holtzmann pacing. Behind her, Patty was pushing herself upright, a mirror image of the way Erin was sprawled on the ground. 

“What,” Patty said. It wasn’t a question. It sounded more like five seconds later she was going to follow it up with ‘the fuck is going on,’ only Holtzmann started talking before she could get there.

“Two and a half would’ve been catastrophic. I mean honestly, who knows. We could’ve been separated for eternity.”

“And instead we’re stuck here?” Abby made it sound nice when she asked, even though Erin knew she was four seconds from losing her entire mind. It was the same way she sounded the very first time Erin told her she saw a ghost. 

Holtzmann tugged on a nearby system of tubing. “I think I can find us a way out of here.”

Patty’s eyes bugged out. “You _think_?”

“Maybe we should try to figure out where we are first,” Erin said, looking around. This place was weird. It looked like they were trapped in someone’s basement, if that person’s basement was also the engine room of the Titanic. “For all we know, we’re not alone.”

“Well this seems like as good a time as any to introduce myself. I’m Korg and you are definitely not alone.”

**

The guy who found them was not, in fact, a pile of rocks – or maybe he was? He was definitely sentient, Erin just couldn’t deduce if he was actually mineral-based, and Korg wouldn’t answer her questions, just kept urging them along deeper and deeper into the belly of whatever the heck they’d landed in.

“So you fell into a wormhole –”

“We technically didn’t fall into it,” Abby said, “it was just we were supposed to send Thor –” Abby winced the second she said it. “Thorddeus. Our friend Thorddeus.”

It was too late. Korg stopped in his tracks. “You know Thor?”

“No?” Abby said.

“This tall?” Korg held his hand in mid-air. “Beard? One eye, the ability to shoot lightning out of his fingers?”

“Thorddeus has two eyes,” Holtzmann said.

“And I’ve never seen him shoot lightning out of _anywhere_ ,” Patty said. “What kind of fucked up magic trick is that?”

“I think he can do that though,” Erin said to her quietly. “I read it on Buzzfeed.”

Patty stared at her. Behind her, Korg also stared, his mouth ajar.

He didn’t say anything, but when he started moving them along again, it was at twice the speed they’d been going earlier.

“I don’t think he believed me about Thorddeus,” Abby whispered. 

“He definitely didn’t,” Holtzmann whispered back. “You’re a terrible liar.”

“Hey guys.” Erin watched as Korg knocked on some giant metal door before opening it a crack, just enough to stick his head in. “Uh –”

“Should we run?” Patty asked, taking three giant steps backwards. “This might be our only chance.”

The window for running closed before it opened, because suddenly Korg was opening the door wider and herding them inside. Little bits of his arm fell off and clattered on the floor when he touched Erin’s shoulder; she fought the urge to grab one and shove it in her pocket. 

“In you go,” Korg said, “all of you, that’s it. Good job. Okay so look, I found these people in heating compartment six. They say they know Thor!”

All of the air went out of Erin’s lungs at once. “Holy shit.”

Holtzmann hit her in the arm excitedly. “I _told_ you it was a good sign I counted all the way to three!”

“Korg,” the woman in the room said, “find Thor. Now.”

“Right-o,” he said, and left without a second glance.

Holtzmann misinterpreted the terrifying silence that followed as her cue. “Loki!” She took a step forward, making Loki and his friends take a step back. “Hi, it’s me, Jillian Holtzmann. You probably recognize me from your dreams.”

The woman with him tried to hide her laugh and failed spectacularly. Loki turned an even paler shade of white. 

“I have _never _dreamt of you in my life,” he said.__

__“Technically correct because they were like, tiny plane-crossings, not dreams,” Holtzmann said, “but who has time to fight over semantics? Can you tell me what day it is?”_ _

__“What?”_ _

__“What day is it?” Holtzmann repeated, slower this time._ _

__Loki sputtered. “Who _are_ you?”_ _

__“And why are you here?” the woman with Loki asked._ _

__“I mean it’s kind of a long story,” Abby said. “See, we know Thor from when he was on Earth –”_ _

__Loki rolled his eyes. “Everyone there knows Thor.”_ _

__“Yeah, but we like, _knew him_ knew him,” Erin said. “He worked for us.”_ _

__“You’re with SHIELD?” Loki didn’t look convinced._ _

__“No, dude, we’re the Ghostbusters,” Patty said._ _

__“NO GHOSTS,” someone yelled from the shadows, loud enough that Erin took a step closer to Patty. Abby did the same thing to Holtzmann in front of them._ _

“Oh my god,” Erin said, trying to convey _I hate everything about this and we’re probably going to die somehow_ with one sideways glance at Patty. 

__“You’re the what?” Loki asked._ _

__“Technically the Conductors of Metaphysical Examination,” Abby said, “but mostly people just call us the Ghostbusters.”_ _

__“NO. GHOSTS.”_ _

__Erin couldn’t tell if she was imagining it or if the ground was actually shaking a little._ _

__“There aren’t any ghosts here,” the woman said, looking behind her. She glanced back at Abby. “Right?”_ _

__“I mean statistically there probably are.” Holtzmann shut up when Abby elbowed her in the side._ _

__“Right,” Abby said while the ground shook again. “No ghosts.”_ _

__“Hold up,” Patty leaned forward, “is that the Hulk?”_ _

__“You know him?” the woman asked._ _

__“EARTH HATE HULK,” Hulk said._ _

__Loki made a face and took a step forward. Erin held her breath._ _

__“How did you get here?” he asked. “And more importantly, _why_ are you here?”_ _

__For some reason he was looking directly at her. She felt her face going hot and kind of wanted to throw up. She’d never thrown up in space before, so that’d be a first. “Well,” she said, and then the door flew open again and she was so startled she jumped. “Shit.”_ _

__“What’s the meaning of this?” Thor asked. “Korg said there was – Erin?”_ _

__She waved and then realized how stupid that probably looked and stopped._ _

__“What are you doing here?” This Thor was missing an eye; Erin couldn’t stop looking at his eye patch and his armor. He never wore armor around the station – it was all normal clothes and his weird eye and the permanent aura of sadness that was practically visible, like Pigpen’s stench lines. “How did you get here?”_ _

__“I just asked them those very questions,” Loki said. Erin didn’t need to look at him to know he was rolling his eyes._ _

__Thor grinned, apparently glad he and Loki were on the same page, and for a brief moment he was the happiest Erin had seen him since he was Kevin. It was almost worth the whole falling-through-a-wormhole disaster._ _

__Holtzmann cleared her throat. “As I was trying to say, we are from the future.”_ _

__**_ _

__It took a long time – like a really long time – to explain everything to Thor. And then again to Valkyrie, and a third time to Loki, who didn’t believe them for a second until Holtzmann said, “Oh yeah, you should probably destroy the tesseract like, immediately. That’d really save everyone a lot of trouble. Like, all the trouble in the whole world.”_ _

__“What?” Loki put his hand on his heart. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”_ _

__“Oh, Loki,” Thor said, in the same tone Erin’s mother used to convey her disappointment that Erin wasn’t teaching anymore._ _

__Loki, to his credit, didn’t bother pretending to keep up the charade. “What? I was trying to save precious artifacts while our home was being destroyed. Is that a crime?”_ _

__“Is stealing a crime?” Valkyrie said from across the room._ _

__Loki balled up his fists. “It is not stealing.”_ _

__“Was it yours to take?”_ _

__“Enough,” Thor held out his hands. “If Thanos is truly coming, there is no time for fighting. You’re certain he’ll come?”_ _

__“Who, Thanos?” Erin asked. “Uh yeah, pretty sure.”_ _

__“This is madness,” Loki said._ _

__Thor stood from the table and set his hand on Loki’s shoulder. “Come,” he said, and from the way Loki’s face went pinched it was more a command than a request. “We have much to do. Valkyrie, find Heimdall and start evacuating everyone. If Thanos is on his way, we need to get as many people to safety as we can. Korg, can you secure a second ship?”_ _

__“Probably,” Korg said before lumbering off with Valkyrie._ _

__“We’ll work on finding a way back to our timeline,” Holtzmann said, like anyone was paying attention to them. “You guys got any empty oil drums lying around?”_ _

__“Maybe,” Thor said. “Check the lower level. Help yourselves to anything you find.”_ _

__“Aww, thanks,” Abby said. “It’s good to see you, buddy!”_ _

__He allowed them one brief, bright smile and then he was gone._ _

__“Alright, Patty, you come with me to check for drums and nuclear waste. Erin, you and Abby want to start stripping wires for the power box? Thanks.”_ _

__“Nuclear waste?” Patty yelled, chasing after Holtzmann. They could hear her yelling all the way down the hall._ _

__**_ _

__It was chaos. Pure chaos._ _

__“Abby! I need you to find me six D batteries.”_ _

__“I don’t think they have those in space!” Abby yelled back._ _

__“These might work.” Valkyrie dropped a handful of small glowing blocks at Holtzmann’s side. Holtzmann picked one up, examining it._ _

__“It’ll do,” she said. “Thanks. If you’re ever on Earth, you should look me up.” She winked._ _

__Valkyrie smirked back at her and left._ _

__“Dang, Holtzy!” Patty started dancing, waving her welding torch through the air like it was a glow stick. “Get it!”_ _

__“Get what?” Thor asked. “Have you built it, the – what was it called again?”_ _

__“A dimensional inverter,” Erin said. “It works by –”_ _

__Thor waved her off. “You think it will work, though?” He glanced behind him, to where Loki was lingering in the doorway._ _

__“Yeah,” Erin said, trying to sound confident. “I mean probably.”_ _

__Thor nodded. He looked about as confident as Erin felt. It was not reassuring._ _

__“Hey, Erin,” Abby snapped her fingers, “we’re kind of on a schedule here.”_ _

__“I know,” she said, going back to feeding the wires through the converter box Patty had welded together._ _

__“Can I help?” Thor gripped either side of the box and it came apart in his hands._ _

__“Damn it, Kev,” Patty said. “I mean, Thor.” She shook her head at him. “You gotta admit, that was classic Kevin.”_ _

__Thor grinned at her like it was a compliment._ _

__“Don’t you guys have like, duct tape?” Erin asked. “This is a big ship, there must be some lying around here somewhere.”_ _

__“We don’t have any animals,” Thor said, sadness flickering across his face. “There was no time to rescue any of them.”_ _

__“Tape,” Erin said. “Duct tape.”_ _

__“Not even the ducks. I told you, we had to flee quickly.”_ _

__Erin pressed her lips together, trying not to get aggravated. He was helping them. That was the most important part. He was going to destroy the tesseract and they were going to finish this inverter and go home and everything would be fine._ _

__“Tape, Thor,” Patty said. “To hold this together.”_ _

__He looked at the warped metal plates. Erin was pretty sure she could see the gears turning in his head. He orchestrated the evacuation of his entire planet twice in like, three days, but tape was really stumping him._ _

__She was so glad he survived the Dustening. She genuinely loved him so much._ _

__“I don’t think we have any tape. Loki!”_ _

__Loki raised one eyebrow and didn’t move from the doorway when Thor waved him over. It took almost a solid minute of Thor gesturing for him to move. “What.”_ _

__“Can you mend this? Bind the edges here.” Thor pointed to the original seams._ _

__“Begging me to fix your mistakes again,” Loki said._ _

__Thor grinned._ _

__“Don’t start.” Loki shook his head, staring steadfastly at the plates. “I haven’t done anything yet.”_ _

__“Loki.” It was all Thor needed to say. Erin wasn’t sure what happened, only one moment the plates were apart and then they were firmly together. “Thank you,” Thor said, reaching out to shake Loki by the back of his neck. “I love you.”_ _

__“Please stop saying that.” Loki rolled his eyes and tried to pull away. Across the room, Abby glared at Erin, so she went back to feeding the wires through the plate, Patty connecting them to the internal conductor._ _

__“I won’t,” Thor said. “You need to know, in case –”_ _

__“In case what?”_ _

“You heard them! In case you _die_.”

__Loki threw his arms in the air. “And what if I live?”_ _

__“Then that would be wonderful!” Thor said, loud enough that Holtzmann rolled out from under the makeshift oil drum they were using to house the core. It felt like time stood still as they all stopped and watched Thor hold Loki’s face in his hands. “I could not bear to lose you, not now. Not ever.”_ _

__No one moved. Thor hadn’t said that last part loudly but it was a small space. Every second felt ten times as long; she remembered Thor promising the ghost version of Loki that they would find him, how his hands had balled into fists because he couldn’t touch him._ _

__“Ship’s leaving in ten,” Valkyrie came back in to say. “And we’ve still got the tesseract to destroy.”_ _

__Everyone pretended they had been working. Loki tried to act like he’d been standing there normally but Thor wouldn’t let him. Valkyrie eyed them both. “Don’t be weird,” she said, and then disappeared as quickly as she’d come._ _

__“I must see them off,” Thor said. “Will you need much longer?”_ _

__Holtzmann hit the side of the metal drum and listened to the echo like it would produce an actual answer. “No, she’s almost ready.”_ _

__Erin fed the last cable through the box and then reached for the lid._ _

__“Loki.” Thor gestured to the box._ _

__Without a word, Loki magically sealed the edges shut for Erin. Then he stuck out his leg and tripped Thor as he left._ _

__They were both laughing and shoving at each other as they headed off to say goodbye to the fleeing Asgardians._ _

__**_ _

__The dimensional inversion was worse the second time around._ _

__“Thank you,” Thor yelled, his voice distorting as they were sucked into the vortex. Erin clutched Abby’s hand and tried not to barf._ _

__The inverter spat them back out in the same stupid Jersey park they’d left from, only somehow it had become the most crowded park of all time._ _

__“What the heck?” Erin climbed woozily to her feet. Next to her, Holtzmann patted the front of her overalls, checking that she was all in one piece._ _

__“This doesn’t look right,” Abby said._ _

__“No, this looks wrong.” Patty shaded her eyes from the blaring sun. Erin looked out at the sea of people that were paying zero attention to them. What the fuck was wrong with New Jersey? “Like, real wrong.”_ _

__Erin’s heart sank. “Crap,” she said, looking around their immediate area. There was the original drum, and the lines she’d helped set up… however long ago it was. She checked her watch; it had stopped working at 6:29, which was probably the exact time they fell through the first wormhole._ _

__And then, like the beautiful, dumb, golden retriever superhero that he was, Thor appeared from behind a tree, holding a half-eaten ice cream cone. His face lit up when he saw them._ _

__“Did it work?”_ _

__“You were the one who was supposed to destroy the stone!” Abby said. “All we did was warn you.”_ _

__Holtzmann looked around nervously. “Maybe we weren’t supposed to interfere. The time traveler’s paradox.”_ _

__Patty’s head whipped around. “The whose what?”_ _

__“I did destroy it,” Thor said._ _

__“That’s why all these stupid people are hanging around the goddamn park,” a raccoon with a gun said. Erin stared at it. A raccoon with a gun._ _

__“Time traveler’s paradox,” she said, fully aware of how panicked her voice sounded._ _

__“No, that’s not a paradox,” Thor said, “This is Rabbit. He helped me fight Thanos.”_ _

__The raccoon used his gun to wave hello. And then he stared out at everyone in the park. “Idiots.”_ _

__Erin turned slowly to Abby, whose eyes were so wide Erin felt a little better about how crazy she felt._ _

__“So, Thor,” Holtzmann said, “if you saved the world, why are you asking us if it worked?”_ _

__“You were going to bring back Loki. I sent him off on the escape ship, for safe-keeping. I haven’t seen him since.”_ _

__“Buddy, you know we left the ship before that,” Abby said. “You were there.”_ _

__Thor made a face like he was trying to remember a very complicated timeline. It gave Erin a proxy headache. “Oh right,” he said after a minute. “It was all so crazy. You appeared on the ship and then you were gone and then you were here and then you were gone.”_ _

__Erin tried not to make sense of it._ _

__“But you stopped Thanos?” Abby asked._ _

“Yes!” Thor gave them a thumbs up. “I destroyed the space stone. He was _not_ happy about that. Actually tried to kill me for a minute, which wasn’t great. Then he left and tried to get the other stones, which he did. That wasn’t great either. And then I hit him with my new axe. He _really_ was not happy about that.”

__The armed raccoon laughed._ _

__“And now we’re here.” Thor smiled at all of them. In the direct sunlight it was almost too much._ _

__“Good job,” Holtzmann said, sitting on the ground. Sitting was a good idea. Suddenly Erin realized how tired she was. Like, tired to the bones._ _

__“Hey,” Abby nudged her side, “at least our hair didn’t turn white this time.”_ _

__“Oh yeah,” Erin touched the end of her ponytail, “woohoo!”_ _

__“Oh what the –” Patty shouted and jumped up, sprinting away from the group. “SNAKE. SNAKE!”_ _

__“Shit.” Erin tried to scramble out of the way but Thor was faster, bending down and picking it up before she could make it a foot._ _

__He held the snake up and shook it. Erin leaned away even though he wasn’t anywhere near her._ _

__“Don’t. Thor, come on.” Erin did not like the way he was making direct eye contact with the snake. The way the snake was hissing, it clearly didn’t like it either._ _

__After a moment Thor sighed heavily and bent to let the snake slither free._ _

__“Not here!” Abby said, trying to wave him away, but it didn’t matter because one second it was a snake and the next there was a flash of bright light and Thor was doubled over, a knife sticking out of his side._ _

__Patty started yelling again._ _

__“Welcome back, brother,” Thor said, grinning as he pulled the knife out of his side. “I knew it was you.”_ _

__Loki stood where the snake had been. He didn’t say anything at all, but Erin could see he was smiling nearly as wide as Thor. It made him look so different from what Erin was used to; it was unsettling and made her heart swell at the same time._ _

__“What the fuck?” Patty said, not even yelling, just shocked. Erin felt the same way. She had so many questions and she didn’t think she wanted the answers to any of them._ _

__Thor dropped the knife and grabbed for Loki. That Loki hugged him back was even weirder than anything else that had happened all day. God. Erin felt like she’d lived a hundred lives and it was barely time for breakfast._ _

__“It’s good to see you again, brother,” Thor said, and then laughed at whatever Loki said in response._ _

__“So was he a snake this whole time?” Abby asked._ _

__“I’m more concerned about the talking raccoon,” Holtzmann said. “He’s like a teenage mutant ninja trash panda.”_ _

__“He can hear you,” the raccoon said._ _

__Erin rubbed the center of her forehead, where the worse of the headache was pounding. “I need a drink. Like a very large, very strong drink.”_ _

__“Amen.” Patty stood and held out her hand to help Erin up. “Yo, Thor, you coming?”_ _

__“What, you think I’d miss the celebration?” Thor pressed a smacking kiss to the side of Loki’s head. “Lead the way!”_ _

__“Oh, everyone’s going?” Erin made a face and then realized there was no point. It was for the best. They’d found Loki, Thor had defeated Thanos, the tesseract was gone and that ginormous raccoon was… part of it. Everyone deserved to celebrate. “Good job, team!”_ _

__She held her hand for a high five._ _

__Thor slapped hit his palm to hers and at the last second grabbed her hand, not letting go. “Thank you,” he said quietly, so sincere Erin thought her heart might flop out of her chest and slither away like a fake snake._ _

__“Yeah, well. Ghostvengers never say die.”_ _

__He beamed at her._ _

__Ahead of them, the raccoon spun around, walking backwards as he asked, “Did you just rip off the Goonies?”_ _

__“Dude, who _are_ you?” Patty asked him._ _

__“I get it now. This is Hell,” Loki muttered, making both Erin and Thor burst out laughing._ _

__“Oh, Loki,” Thor said, hugging Loki and Erin into his sides, an arm slung around both their shoulders, “I missed you.”_ _


End file.
